


blue moon shine down on me

by feralphoenix



Category: Uncommon Time (Video Game)
Genre: Borderline Personality Disorder, Gen, Other, Post-Canon, Queerplatonic Relationships, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-21
Updated: 2017-08-21
Packaged: 2018-12-18 01:01:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11863377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feralphoenix/pseuds/feralphoenix
Summary: “I will love you no matter what you do with your hair,” Saki goes on calmly, as if he didn’t hear you. “Leave it like this, cut it short, dye it rainbow colors, shave it off, anything is fine as long as you like it. I’m not going to stop caring about you if I think that how you dress or modify your body is silly or not to my taste. It’s your body, Meirin. You’re the only one who has any right to decide how it should look.”Heat rushes into your face at Saki’s too-patient pronouncement. “How and why do you keep always doing this.”It was a rhetorical question, but he smiles and answers you anyway: “We’ve been living together for two years now. I know at least as much about how you behave as you have observed about me.”In which Meirin receives a letter and pays a visit to friends, Teagan returns home, and there is much ado about Meirin's hair.





	blue moon shine down on me

**Author's Note:**

> _(they don’t love you like I love you_ – i split my [soul](http://inkskinned.com/post/159151673729/) open trying to pour perfect in.)
> 
> you probably shouldn't be here unless you've cleared ending 1.

Your hair looks like crap.

This has been your first thought when you look in the mirror every day for at least two weeks, and it’s also a true assessment. Last year when you cut your hair as a bargaining chip to get Saki to cut his too, you cropped it all neatly to chin length except for the bit over your right temple, which you left a little past shoulder length, long enough to braid. And it was cute like that! But your stupid hair grows like happy, happy weeds and most of it’s past your shoulders again, the side all the way down to your elbow. This isn’t cute at all. You’ve gotta do something about it soon.

It’d be easy to just chop it so that it’s even with the rest, but… what if there’s something neat you can do with this one elbow-length bit? Picking up scissors or going to a beautician with no plan is never good, especially here where there aren’t many Easterners like you, and so fewer hairdressers familiar with your hair texture.

All you know is that the side braid’s not working anymore, and you have no idea what _would_ work instead. The need for a decision vs your lack of bright ideas itches worse than being young and stupid and not knowing how much bug-repellant cream to put on before trekking through the forest.

There’s faint tapping from the hallway, so you don’t jump out of your skin when Saki says, “Please stop trying to glare a hole through the mirror. Neither of us can afford to replace it.”

You slouch back in your chair and stare sidelong at him. “Well, until I figure out how to fire magic beams from my eyes, I think the mirror is pretty safe.”

_Saki’s_ hair doesn’t look like crap, which is totally and completely unfair if anyone was asking you (they aren’t). Of course Saki’s hair has only grown long enough to cover the base of his jaw, since it’s curly instead of straight. And he’d probably trade hair situations with you if he could, so it’s pointless to be jealous. The little zigzags of white through his ashy blond curls are scary anyway, again if anyone was asking you (they still aren’t), almost scarier than the faint lines on his face.

Your best friend shifts his weight against the doorframe, hooks his cane over his forearm near the elbow, and produces a letter from somewhere in his skirts. “You have mail.”

This is a welcome distraction from the monster that is your hair, and you sit up a little. “From Alto?”

Saki giggles a little, hiding his mouth behind the hand with the letter in it. “You know it will take longer than two weeks for mail to reach her and then come back here, even if she were to write a reply immediately. It appears to be from your sister.”

You scrape your chair back and get up to take it. That’s still pretty nice, you guess, even if a letter from Alto would’ve been more fun. Rizuki and your parents are too busy to send letters, and the twins are too little still to care about writing them, but Menou is pretty diligent about writing you, and it’s… a way better feeling than you ever thought it would be to keep up with her.

“I could’ve gone to get the mail,” you say to Saki.

He rolls his eyes, cocking his chin back. Unrestrained by the veil he’d be wearing outside, his hair poofs backwards briefly. _“Please._ You’re aware that I go back to the hospital in two weeks, yes? That’s another solid month, possibly more, of having to use a wheelchair—whether _I_ think I need it or not. Let me enjoy walking while I’m still allowed; I’m fine with the cane for now.”

“Sorry about your impending mobility crisis,” you say, because the way Saki rolls his eyes at you and crosses your room to sprawl back over your bed like he owns it is preferable to the way he’d smile all tight and contained if you got anxious or worried.

You work the seal off the envelope with a fingernail and sit back down at your little mini vanity slash beauty desk.

_Dear Meirin,_ it reads in your sister’s practiced calligraphy, _it was good to receive your last letter and hear about your current exploits._

“Is she doing that charming thing that you Eastern Alliancers do where you switch writing systems every few paragraphs,” Saki wants to know from the bed.

You consider the letter. “Yeah, I’d say this is pretty snoop-proof for you, sorry. Also you’re one to talk—you use Hebrew half the time when _you_ write home.”

“I speak to my parents in two character sets where you speak to your family in _four.”_ Like this proves his point or something.

You go back to reading your letter.

_Our brother seems too distracted to handle the task by himself, and he gave me leave to tell you about the situation, so do forgive him. You’re going to be an aunt. According to the palace healers, Lingshen will be due sometime around year’s end._

You whistle a little. Rizuki’s marriage had been arranged long before you left home, and you can’t even remember Xie Lingshen’s face, but you remember enough of politics in the Alliance to know what a big deal it will have been for everyone for it to go through, for there to be new kids born between a prince of Yamato and a princess of Zhongguo.

Menou switches to Imperial, of all things, for the next two paragraphs. _It’s unfortunate that you will not be able to return home in time to meet the baby. But if your partner’s health allows, I would very much like to see you back for MY wedding. Mi-yeon and I would like to meet these friends of yours._

_It pains me to have to request this, but if you wish to discuss my fiancée in your reply, please continue to refer to her as male. You know our parents don’t care about these things, but she has warned me that her own parents are liable to cancel our engagement. You cannot even begin to fathom the trouble I would have finding another bride from Joseon (as our parents do not wish to wait for the twins to grow to marriage age to stabilize the political situation), and I like the one I have now._

“Tch,” you say aloud, wrinkling your nose at the letter.

“Meirin?” Saki asks, still not quite sitting up.

“We’re invited to my sister’s wedding eventually if you can travel by then,” you say, waving the letter. “And also she is _bragging about her hot girlfriend at me.”_

Saki makes a very undignified laughterish sound through his nose and rolls so that he’s facing away from you. Typical. “Your prince and/or princess will come one day, you know.”

“Yeah right. So far everyone I’ve had even the mildest of crushes on has either ditched me as soon as our relationship stopped being convenient, or was never as serious about it as me, or isn’t into girls. Or isn’t into _anybody._ For now I just wanna try thinking that it’s nice to have a break.”

You could also say that it’s nice having Saki be the most important person in your life instead of a romantic partner, but that tends to make him all distressed about holding you back and stopping you from going out to party, live your life, etc. even though you’ve told him like a billion times that he isn’t. Even rattling off what’s practically a self-help book spiel about friendship being equally valuable to romance cannot always stop him from being self-effacing and noble.

He’ll get used to the idea eventually. You hope. The more physically taxing periods of treatment aren’t particularly good for Saki’s ongoing petty slapfight with depression, but his doctors say his prognosis has gotten a lot less grim, and you’re pretty sure a more certain light at the end of the tunnel is good for him.

The rest of Menou’s letter deals with politics—oh you _so do not care_ —and little incidents between household members, remarks on the seasons, and so on. She asks after your friends, since you’ve namedropped all of them in letters to her, and expresses an interest you’re pretty sure is mostly polite in hearing your quote-unquote _performance piece_ from the World Tuning, which you’ve only really explained vaguely. Alto’s actions upon becoming the new head of the Cantabile family have kicked up a real shitstorm, and the ripples are gonna keep spreading. You’ll have the chance to talk to your family about this later, when there’s context.

You sort of don’t want to talk to your family about the whole depth and scope of _this_ at all, since you don’t know how they’d react to it. What happened two years ago with the World Tuning was—it was intense, and hard, and it changed you. Maybe your family would try to make it theirs, when it’s really _yours_ and it had nothing to do with them. Even if they praised you for your “heroism” it would just feel empty, since there’s no way they can ever really understand.

When you’re done with it, you fold the letter back up and set it on your table. You’ll give it a couple days to stew before you think of how to respond.

You definitely know what your parents would want you to do with your hair—cut it all to one length, and either wear it straight or in one of the elaborate pinned-up styles that a young woman of your social status is entitled to show off with. And Menou would probably agree.

…You are definitely not going to do that with your hair. You may be desperate for love and affection always, but god damn it your standards are _not_ that low. Your family isn’t even _here_ to give you love and affection if you do what you’re guessing they would want.

“Saki?”

“Hm?” When you turn to look, he’s stretched out on your bed with his chin in his hands, gaze steady on you.

“What do _you_ think I ought to do with my hair?”

He does that _thing_ where he raises his eyebrows at you for just long enough for you to get a good sense of how he’s gonna answer before going ahead and saying delicately, “Meirin, I think you should do what _you_ want to do with your hair.”

Groan. “I’m asking because _I don’t have any ideas,_ though.”

“I will love you no matter what you do with your hair,” Saki goes on calmly, as if he didn’t hear you. “Leave it like this, cut it short, dye it rainbow colors, shave it off, anything is fine as long as you like it. I’m not going to stop caring about you if I think that how you dress or modify your body is silly or not to my taste. It’s _your_ body, Meirin. You’re the only one who has any right to decide how it should look.”

Heat rushes into your face at Saki’s too-patient pronouncement. “How and why do you keep _always_ doing this.”

It was a rhetorical question, but he smiles and answers you anyway: “We’ve been living together for two years now. I know at least as much about how you behave as you have observed about me.”

 

 

The day’s errands are definitely not going to get run by Saki, who doesn’t have the energy to trek all over town by foot even on good days anymore, so you braid the long bit of your hair and tie it back with the rest in a ponytail. It looks and feels sloppy and is only marginally better than leaving it all loose; you cringe a little every time you catch a glimpse of your reflection in window panes.

The rest of being out is good, though. It’s colder and there’s a demure little early-autumn bite to the air that refreshes you; it’s not too hot to jog. Summer is usually your favorite season for a lot of sophisticated reasons (namely: it’s got your birthday in it), but both the moist heat of your home country and the baking sun of this city get old after a while. You can go on walks with Saki now, when he’s able to walk; his leucism and his loyalty to his long sleeves and skirts and veils culture mean that he can’t go out in summer at all unless one of you’s protecting him with a parasol. He positively wilts in strong light and heat.

You have to pick up food and things that’ll need to be brought home right away to be used or stored, which means that if you’re going to visit Aubrey today you’d better do that beforehand. Not like you really need the excuse to—you make a point of going to bug them once or twice a week, since usually they don’t feel up to cutting through huge crowds or taking convoluted long ways across town to your and Saki’s house. They rarely come to you unless Tristan is walking them.

Aubrey could probably have stayed in the Cantabile estates if they’d wanted to—even though their and Alto’s relationship is sort of kind of on an extended break, what with Alto traveling and all, they’re still her partner—but they didn’t want to, and for that you cannot blame them. That dry and gloomy old mansion and its starched inhabitants individually would be oppressive; put together they’re frankly too much.

They probably could’ve gotten their own house, too, if they’d wanted to, but they’d gauged that suddenly leaping into sole homeownership would be too much independence and stress too quickly.

Aubrey seems happy where they are right now, though. You remember going to check on them early on, asking how they were settling in—they’d just smiled at you and gestured around and said that it felt like home.

The air seems to change subtly once you’ve safely gotten carded by the guards and are let onto the streets of the capital’s red light district. People, mostly the workers and residents, know you here; you’re _pretty_ sure that’s thanks to how often you’re in here visiting Aubrey and Tristan rather than how often you’ve made the rounds. You’re in here more for the former more often than the latter, though you _are_ still here for the latter from time to time. You might not be in the market for a relationship right now, but hey, sometimes a girl gets bored of her hand and/or toys and wants a warm body.

You trade greetings with that masseuse whose name you keep forgetting, and restrain yourself to waving from across the street to the girl whose family’s from Joseon, seeing as if you actually go over to say hi you’re liable to wind up loitering on the street corner talking up a storm for the next hour. The young man who you’ve been with a couple times waves daintily at you and winks, and you wave back and tell him you’ll be back later when you’ve got time.

The Sugar Peach looms large at the end of the main road, easily the tallest building here with its three stories. You’ve been in through the main doors more than once and had an extremely good time on every occasion, but today you head down the alley between it and the adult toy emporium next door until you can access the fire escape at the back of the building. It’s the only way to get to the apartments on the top floor unless you’re an employee.

From what Tristan’s told you, a lot of brothel owners keep apartments like this for workers who are either high-profile and live in the red light district by choice, or ones who have nowhere else to go. In good establishments, it serves the entire shop’s interests if the workers are fed and clothed and sheltered properly; the best places will help their workers find other places of residence if they don’t want to stay in the apartments forever.

The worst places use the system to keep their employees tied to them, but the worst places don’t survive for very long. It’s Tristan’s job as an informant to help ensure this. Which you think is part of the reason he’s got such lavish living quarters, but you’re not actually sure how much of the Sugar Peach’s staff knows about the informant thing, come to think of it. _You_ only know because you’re friendly with the whole Almace family. It’s fully possible that Tristan has the fancy apartment above his workplace solely because he’s one of its highest-profile courtesans—appointment-only unless you know him, and usually booked solid at least a month in advance.

Which is sure saying something, since three years ago when he started working here Tristan was the nowhere-else-to-go type. He _could’ve_ gone back to live with his parents if he’d wanted to, but he was too proud, and apparently the falling-out he and Teagan had had back then had really just been that bad.

Your knees are only just starting to hurt when you finally step from the long back-and-forth of the stair onto the even balcony, an immediate and gratifying easement. Tristan and Aubrey live on the far corner, just a quick jog away. The apartment has a real doorbell, carved small and fancy, with a little copper button that’s still shiny red-gold, shielded by the balcony spells from the rain. It’s smooth under your fingertip. You always want to press it a dozen times instead of just one, but it only takes one press for Tristan to open the door and smile down at you.

He’s devastatingly handsome, just like his sister—just like everyone in his family actually, the hotness gene is strong in the Almaces. His face is almost the same shape as Teagan’s—the nose a little stronger, but the shape of the eyes is the same, the light brown of his skin, the color of his hair. They’re about the same height too. That’s where the resemblance ends, though: Tristan’s eyes are dark blue instead of Teagan’s dark green, and he wears his hair long and flowing with thin little braids tucked into the shiny black waves of it all.

Tristan doesn’t have the heavy muscles his sister does, either, and this you know because he always—unless it’s the dead of winter or something—wears shirts that hang open. He apparently waxes, and he likes to wear pendants that strategically draw attention to the smooth perfect skin of his chest. Even on his off hours, his appearance is always professionally put-together; this is a man who knows what beauty is and wields it like a weapon.

“It’s good to see you back here again,” Tristan tells you, and then he actually _winks,_ and you could probably die on the spot. He doesn’t have any more interest in romance than Teagan does, but he flirts even more than she does, and with him it’s actually on _purpose._ You think he must think it’s funny to watch your face heat up. “I haven’t been able to pry the little professor away from their desk all day—I bet you’ll have more success than me.”

He steps back, and you let yourself in.

If you can ever afford it, you’re going to thoroughly interrogate Tristan on all the places he bought his furnishings and then you’re going to _buy those stores out._ Or even better, you and Saki can make him show you in person and you can all go on a shopping spree. No matter how many times you come here you’re always a little wowed by how plush and fashionable Tristan’s place is, a sophisticated fusion of imported and modern furniture. It’s also always super _clean,_ unlike your and Saki’s house, which tends to accumulate lots of clutter between the two of you and which Saki is better at straightening up than you are, which means it stays pretty cluttered when he’s not feeling well (read: most of the time).

The rooms would be spacious even if this weren’t an apartment—the Sugar Peach is a big building, but even so, Tristan’s personal living quarters are _large._ Or at least it seems that way. Maybe the way he positions the furniture helps give off that impression, like subtly making your facial features look bigger or smaller with makeup. Either way, there was more than enough room for Aubrey to move in and even have their own bedroom, though their preferred working space is the table by the wide window, next to the leafy potted plant and the row of tiny succulents on the sill.

As Tristan said, they’re there right now, bent over the big black typewriter. From the speed of the keys clacking you’re pretty sure they’re copying out something they’ve written longhand—now that they’ve gotten used to working the machine, they can be pretty fast at it. They don’t seem to notice that you’re here at all, though you’re definitely not trying to muffle your footsteps. You turn to look over your shoulder at Tristan. He shrugs at you helplessly.

There’s not really any other way for it, so you approach steadily, skirting the long dinner table, the bookshelves, and the colorful plant pots. You’re making noise, deliberately bumping into stuff here and there, but Aubrey still doesn’t appear to notice you—they just keep typing furiously.

At last you’re standing directly behind them, so close that your shadow is even falling across their notes. They keep typing with no interruption. It’d be a little mean to spook them and risk ruining their paper, so you keep waiting until they finish their line and have paused to say hi.

Aubrey doesn’t jerk back comically, but they do gasp a little and freeze for a few seconds before they turn to look up at you over their shoulder.

“Well, Tristan says you were ignoring _him,”_ you say in your own defense as they raise their eyebrows at you. This expression they’re wearing is exactly the same as one Alto makes, and for a second you miss her so much it’s physically painful. You know better than to actually say that to Aubrey, though, since it must be a million times worse for them.

“This essay is due in two days and I want to get it to the dean of elemental science early,” Aubrey says sourly.

“You can still probably do that if you like, take a break to get up and make sure your muscles don’t all atrophy and your butt doesn’t get glued to your chair,” you tell them. God, you’d _die_ if you ever had to sit still for as long each day as Aubrey seems to like to.

They make a faint noise of distaste at you, and that rankles a little if you’re gonna be honest with yourself, but they still turn their chair around to face you.

Aubrey is apparently starting to make a name for themself in the local research community. You’re not a hundred percent sure when that started happening actually, except that you know they said they wanted to do their part breadwinning and not just have Tristan support them, so they took some classes and were an assistant in some experiments and did some choir work on the side. And now they have a typewriter, and their name in a bunch of apparently high-profile scientific and magical journals. Pretty impressive for someone who had to catch up on two thousand years’ worth of theory.

“Please tell me that you’re not _just_ here to nag me to exercise,” Aubrey says.

“I am here to nag you to exercise,” you tell them, “but also to say hi because I was going shopping anyway, and to ask your opinion on something.”

“And to ogle me?” says Tristan from behind you. He’s grinning, when you look.

“Always to ogle you.” Might as well be honest about it.

Aubrey sighs at you, but they’re smiling at the same time. You smile back.

“How’s stuff going with your work?”

They push their glasses up on their nose. “If you’re going to go shopping, then I suppose you don’t have time to listen to all the details…”

You shrug. “Yeah, but like—also I’m not smart like you, so I probably wouldn’t really get it if you gave me the whole technobabble version.”

Aubrey crosses their arms and scowls at you. It’s probably their attempt to be fierce and strict, but they just look adorable. You’re never going to tell them. “Don’t sell yourself short that way. You’re _brilliant._ It’s just a different kind of intelligence from”—they gesture at their paper—“this.”

They’re probably mostly saying that to be nice, but it _is_ nice, and you tap the tip of your shoe against the nice hardwood floors, dropping your eyes to look at the patterned rugs and the table corners and Aubrey’s feet, the pale white of their skin showing through their dark tights.

“Aubrey, what should I do with my hair?” you wind up asking just then, somehow, even though this isn’t how you’d planned on bringing it up at _all,_ you were _going_ to be more smooth about it.

“Your hair?” they repeat. You lift your chin to find that they’re blinking at you. It takes them a minute to catch on, which feels for some reason like the longest and worst minute of your life even though you _know_ that can’t be right. “Isn’t it fine like this?”

“It is _not fine,_ it looks awful and I don’t know what to do with it!”

“Your hair looks _cute_ no matter what you do with it,” Tristan says, and okay, if Aubrey doesn’t want to give you their two cents you did want his, but also this is a really _useless_ two cents. “Whatever you decide, it’s gonna look great.”

You groan as theatrically as you possibly can, which is very. “I’m asking ‘cause I want you guys to _help me decide._ What would _you_ like?”

Aubrey shakes their head, guileless. “I’ve had my hair the same way all my life,” they point out. “And my hair texture is very different from yours. Even if I came up with something for you, there’s no guarantee it would work.”

Tristan spreads his hands and shrugs, giving you his most winning smile of them all. “It’s your head. It’s not like you have clients to keep happy, so you can pick whatever you want. Where’s the fun in letting us choose for you?”

You sigh instead of screaming. They just don’t _get_ it, or actually they do get it and they’re just refusing to tell you to fuck with you. Or because they think this will be a good personal growth moment, maybe; you’ve gotta stop suspecting the worst of everyone when stuff like this happens. Except that that’s almost even worse because it’s so patronizing.

“You’re not gonna give me _any_ ideas?” you whine.

“No,” says Aubrey, “all my ideas are reserved for this paper.”

Tristan grins more widely yet. “I’m a delicious hunk of man, not a cheat sheet.”

“You people suck,” you denounce. Your friends have the gall to just laugh at you.

 

 

“Let me carry that,” a familiar voice says to you when you’re almost all the way back home, and you nearly drop the grocery bag in surprise because nobody told you that Teagan was back.

You turn and give her a quick once-over: She’s got a backpack on under her traveling cloak and her violin case dangles casual from her left hand, she looks windblown, so she must have literally just arrived.

“I’m flattered, but I think I’m okay,” you tell her. “But you can totally walk me home and open the door for me, that would super help.”

“I would love to ‘super help’,” she says dryly, and grins down at you. It’s been all of two years and you know you literally have zero chance, but your heart still does a feeble somersault in your chest anyway despite all of that. You wish it wouldn’t. Having a crush on this supremely unattainable girl was uncomfortable, and you want to take the fact that that happened to the grave without her ever knowing, but it’s hard when she’s so effortlessly handsome and half the non-mean shit that comes out of her mouth sounds like flirting. You don’t think she can help any of that, though.

On the way back she talks about the tour, the outdoor concerts, a pigeon landing on her stand partner’s shoe and shitting on it; you nearly drop the groceries again because you’re laughing so hard.

“In a way I actually miss playing with just you guys—isn’t that wild? It’s really fucking embarrassing because I spent most of our rehearsals stressed out and pissy for no good reason and constantly crawling up your ass, or Saki’s. But when you only practice for three or four hours a day and those three or four hours are _all_ spent on the violin sections practicing the same passages, to the point where the bass sections have all got out newspapers and books behind the conductor’s back… I kept thinking, god, I miss Meirin, she at least _tried._ The conductor kicked the three back stands out because they couldn’t get it together and none of them even cared.”

All your formal lessons as a kid were one-on-one with your tutor; traveling with the small ensemble and then with Alto’s quintet were the biggest groups you’d ever been part of. “That sounds so boring,” you tell Teagan after you’ve explained that to her. “I’m almost glad I never played in an actual orchestra if that’s what practices are like.”

“Honestly it might just be this particular orchestra that’s really unmotivated,” Teagan hedges. You’re watching her more than you’re watching where you’re going; the way’s familiar and you missed the way she gestures when she’s annoyed or telling a story. “I got some offers from higher-bill orchestras and from smaller ensembles and accompanists that I’m gonna sort through and send answers to later. We’ll see how I like those.”

“You big important soloist, you,” you tease. “I’m honored you even have time for peasants like me and Saki anymore.”

“You’re my friend, dumbass,” Teagan responds immediately. “Plus aren’t you actually like, a princess or something.”

“I used to be one, sort of.” You shrug and heft the groceries up against your chest. “I like being a peasant better, thanks. Do you want to stay for dinner? Saki will want to say hi and catch up too. I can make stew, that’ll be enough for all of us.”

Saki commandeers Teagan immediately when you get home, plying her with questions about the cities she’s toured, the performances she’s been in. You’ve already heard it all, so you separate ingredients you plan to use immediately from the ones that need to be stored, and tuck the latter away in the potato cellar and the icebox and the cupboards. Then you get out the flour and the big pot and the knives and the wax paper, and set everything out on the counter.

“If you guys want to help wash vegetables and cut stuff up, that would be nice,” you call into the living room, and in they both come. You set Teagan to peeling and cutting potatoes, and make to direct Saki to the celery and carrots. He grasps your shoulder with polite force and leans in so that his face is parallel to yours, facing the opposite direction.

“I will warn you before you think to ply Teagan for hairstyle ideas,” he says soft and fake-cheerful, “I’ve already talked to her about not giving you any.”

The snap of annoyance is bright and immediate, but you keep your own voice down to match his: “Excuse me?”

“You’re looking for a right answer to a problem that no one’s posed you,” Saki goes on, mild, and you feel like he’s simultaneously overturned a rock to show you slimy bugs underneath and has also pulled your shirt off in the middle of a crowded room. “It’s a little thing, but Meirin, you turn yourself into a chameleon too much over little things. It isn’t bad in general to watch others closely and try to accommodate for them, but it _is_ harmful to change _yourself_ too much to please those around you.”

It can’t properly put a pin in the balloon of your mad that you’ve talked to him about stuff like this, specifically about how much of a problem you know it is, but you still remind yourself of that fact and squeeze your eyes shut tight. “You’re not wrong, but oh my _god,_ fuck you.”

Saki unwinds his fingers from your shoulder and pats it. “I’m sorry, but you have to make your own decision here.” He sounds amused, even. You’re going to forget how pissed you are pretty soon, but also you’re going to remember this the next time you’re mad at him, and that makes you want to kick a hole in the wall, some.

You work on the beef while Saki and Teagan finish cutting vegetables and set them up to boil in water and broth, cutting it into small blocks, excising too-thick stripes of fat, rolling them in flour. It is maybe not as good for working out aggression as beating something up or setting something on fire.

“We’ve still got a while before the canned stuff goes in,” you say, washing your hands. “I haven’t played in a while and I miss it. You, Miss Big Shot, should fight me.”

“Are you suggesting a street corner music duel,” says Teagan.

“Yes, and I am gonna bring the hurt,” you say, pointing at her. “Just how well _have_ you learned to memorize over your illustrious soloist career thus far? Show me.”

“If you’re sure you can even keep up,” Teagan says, raising her eyebrows and sneering a little.

“I’ll mind the pot and make sure it doesn’t boil over, shall I?” says Saki. “You two go on and have fun.”

 

 

You and Teagan set up your cases about six feet away from each other, and it surprises you a little when she doesn’t set up a stand after all—her new career must’ve polished her skills even further after all. She raises her eyebrows at you like _so what are we going to play_ and you bow to her, twisting your right hand and your bow in a ladies-first flourish. Teagan snorts at you in the way that sounds like she’s looking down on you but actually means she’s laughing.

She leads off with a piece you have never heard in your life but can tell from the sound is some classical something. You let her get through it once and then she loops around a second time—good, she actually knows dueling etiquette—and you proceed to tear it up and swing it.

Duels you like because you can get attention from a crowd just by being flashy and good, and you got taught to improvise from the best. You’re attracting people—you’re not focusing but you can see them clumping up and forming a semicircle around you and Teagan—but you just focus on her, concentrating all your hearing on the sound she’s putting out.

Done with her song, you pick one you know, a folk tune with a lot of elbow and even more flourish. There’s no way Teagan will be able to pick up all its intricacy and you know that, so you let her just interpret the main melody and salvage everything she’s dropping into an accompaniment of your own devising.

Then you do Molly on the Shore just for old time’s sake, both of you slugging it out for control of the song until Teagan’s grin is bright against her light brown skin and you’re laughing.

By the time this is done your fingers are tingling from flying up and down the fingerboard of your violin, the back of your neck is sweaty, and your hair band has snapped and is flapping awkwardly, caught in the long braid. The cheering crowd is being gently shooed away by a senior guard with gray in their hair, who upon second examination turns out to be Teagan’s mother. Once everyone has dispersed, she picks up a bouquet of fluffy red and pink carnations that didn’t quite make it into Teagan’s violin case and sets them down upon the speckles of coins properly.

“This isn’t the first time I’ve stumbled upon my daughter getting into a fight in the middle of the street, but it’s probably the most harmless and entertaining one,” she jokes, and goes back to her shift.

“Thanks, Mom,” Teagan calls after her, sarcasm and affection both. She stoops down to clear out her violin case, dumps the fistful of change into yours, and removes a single flower from the bouquet as she straightens up. She considers it, then turns and—horribly casual—tucks it into the top of your braid. “Here, you have this one.”

She lets herself back into your house too soon to see you blush, and you clap a hand to your chest and scowl after her. Teagan is an appalling person and you cannot believe how little self-awareness she can have.

On the way to put your violin back in your room, you catch a glance of yourself in the hall mirror. Your hairstyle itself is still terrible, but the flower, the splash of color at your temple—that right there is _something._

 

 

The next day you pick up cheap leaf-shaped hair pins made from enamel and a large amount of hair dye, and spend the better part of your morning giving the long braid a gradient. Coiling it up in the shape of a rose is harder—you’ve almost forgotten how to do it, honestly—but you get it in the end.

It looks good.


End file.
